About Us

Alex Wrekk has been creating custom buttons since 2000 and in April of 2012 she opened the brick and mortar Portland Button Works shop in North Portland. Paul Burke ran the show while Alex was out of town at zine events but he came on board full time in the spring of 2014.

Portland Button Works specializes in making custom buttons, magnets and other items for your project, school, band, non-profit, memorial, pub crawl or whatever reason you may need tiny pictures to pin to your clothes! Your order can be picked up and paid for at our shop or shipped around the world! We offer rush orders and design services for additional fees.

We also offer a large selection of our own button designs (get in touch for wholesale pricing if you are interested in reselling), as well as a growing zine, comic, and book distro.

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Alex Wrekk

Alex's life revolves around making things; primarily zines, buttons, vegan food, travel plans, and space for a cat in her bed.

Alex moved to Portland, Oregon from Salt Lake City, Utah in 1999 and worked for Microcosm Publishing from 1999 to 2006. Then she started and ran Small World Buttons until 2012. In 2012 Alex opened Portland Button Works and zine distro, an online and brick and mortar shop in North Portland, blocks away from her home of 12 years. Alex maintains the Portland Button Work website and physical shop. She relishes putting stuff in envelopes for the postal carrier to bring to you!.

Alex has been creating the zineBrainscan since 1997 with stories ranging from travel, reproductive health, love, emotional abuse recovery, zine culture, and even fiction all wrapped up in text and photocopier art. She also wrote the book Stolen Sharpie Revolution: A DIY guide for zines and zine culture that is now entering its 5th printing.

Alex also enjoys fine craft beer, collecting dice and playing Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder, hanging out with her partner Paul, traveling, talking to birds and squirrels on the way to work and is a semi-recent convert to the church of cats thanks to Jackie and OJ.

Paul Burke

Born in Las Vegas before being whisked away to an Air Force base in Germany with his family, Paul eventually ended up in Utah. Paul made zines and was in several bands in Salt lake City before moving to Portland in 2006. For years Paul kept the button making business afloat when Alex was off on zine adventures. When he's not pressing buttons at the Portland Button Works shop and writing hot sauce reviews for Sweating Peppers zine he's enjoying craft beers, Doctor Who, and playing music. Currently Paul is part of many projects, Scourge of Ians (Post Pop Punk), Ramodes (Depeche Mode songs ala Ramones style), An actual Ramones cover band playing bass and back up vox (still debating a name), Heaven & Earth Association (Synthpop/Darkwave), Space Coffins (Psychedelic Pop Punk so new that we have not a band page yet with members of Faster Housecat) and arranges music, sings and plays guitar/drums in The Copy Scams (the world's best international zine themed band) He also performs and writes his solo synth-pop project latenightsleept.v. since 2003.